NRL reckons there's 8 minutes lost through players wasting time. New rules are being brought in straight away but will only be enforced with penalties from Round 15 onwards.

The NRL has issued a crackdown on time-wasting in a bid to regain an estimated eight minutes of match time every game.

Rules being introduced this week will require teams to be ready to pack for a scrum within 30 seconds of one being awarded, and the 40-second time limit for line drop-outs has also been cut to 30 seconds.

Failure to do so will result in a penalty, but only from round 15 onwards once the rule changes are properly enforced.

"Due to the fact these changes are to be introduced a third of the way through a season, we believe that a period of adjustment for players and officials to this amendment is required,'' general manager of football operations, Nathan McGuirk, said in a statement.

"Which is why penalties will not be enforced until the start of round 15."

The reasoning behind this is that they believe up to eight minutes of the game time is lost through overly slow packing of scrums and by implication at drop outs.

He's got a point about changing rules mid-season. If it's such a big deal, why not wait til the start of next year. Although I've never considered the speed scrums are formed to be a problem. Odd how the games authorities have suddenly decided it is a problem. On Monday night, for example, I doubt Melbourne and Manly would've been in the mood for speeding the game up. The Storm boys in particular looked like they could've done with going slower.

He agreed that there was a concern about changes being made mid season. He was also hoping that a ref would give players a warning if they were too slow for his liking so they could hurry up before any penalty was given.

To lose a close game at the end by giving such a penalty away would be heartbreaking.

I guess a team would only make that mistake once.

IMO the ref's should warn the players about their slowness in these matters to begin with and how they'd be penalised unless an immediate scrum was formed or a kick was made. The rounds up until Round 15 will, I expect, be used for this purpose.